


BATFAM 1940s AU

by dhaliadhalia



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Babs is a war nurse turned inventor turned polio survivor, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Dick is too but later he becomes a newsie bc best of both worlds, Drugs, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Historically Inaccurate, Jason is a hot wwii soldier, Lots of fluff but also angst, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Language, My First Fanfic, Nazis, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Parent/Child Incest, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Physical Abuse, Rape Recovery, Romance, Sex, Sexual Abuse, Steph's dad is basically a terrible person, Tim and Damian are newsies, Torture, Verbal Abuse, World War II, basically lots of 1940s WWII batfam stuff that dreams are made of, i just make shit up as i go, i know nothing of war, i succ at writing action but i tried anyway, im warning you now so don't come for me, jason and roy mess around but they're mostly just friends with benefits, yeah thats still Steph's dad im sorry its not explicit or lingered upon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-11 16:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15319980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhaliadhalia/pseuds/dhaliadhalia
Summary: What if the Batfam was set in the 1940s at the tail end of World War II?Barbara Gordon works as a field nurse alongside Dick Grayson, a soldier, before they are both wounded and sent home to deal with the loss of their families and themselves.Everyone assumed Jason Todd died on the battlefield, but he was actually captured by Nazis and is being kept with several other American soldiers as they torture him for information on the Allies.Bruce Wayne, sent into a manic rage by his son's death, charges a Nazi stronghold, intent on finding his son.**Please read the tags. There is definitely some triggering stuff in this fic. I will try not to go into too much detail about the gross stuff, but it is a pretty important part of one of the storylines. Be careful!**





	1. Chapter 1 (Dick, Babs)

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is probably hugely historically and/or otherwise situationally inaccurate, but honestly I don't care. This is just supposed to be me writing for fun between graduate school projects. So please don't bother correcting any historical facts unless it would make the story better! Thanks and enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Full dickbabs in this chap :)

The sheets itched.  


It wasn’t a particularly important detail about this particular evening. She’d spent every night for the past year and a half in those sheets, letting the fibers walk across her skin until she dreamt about spiders doing waltzes between the hairs on her arms. However, despite her acceptance of this particularly annoying fate, it was still the reason she’d ducked out of the nurse’s tent.  


Was Barbara Gordon, esteemed if not slightly troublesome ( _How does someone “work too hard?”_ ) field nurse in the war against Nazi Germany, supposed to be walking around after dark in an active war zone? Not necessarily. But Barbara prided her sense of practicality over her impeccable reason—though she did think the two married, in every occasion except ones that prevented her from doing something she really wanted to do. It was only practical to step outside when you’d been in a stuffy tent tending to dying men all day. Barbara deserved that much, right?  


She paused at the unspoken edge of camp, taking a deep gulp of the cool night air. The scent of smoke and gasoline reminded her of home, of Gotham in wintertime, when everyone preferred driving cars to walking in the snow, meaning every breath you took tasted like the inside of an exhaust pipe. A stray breeze brought goosebumps to her exposed arms and legs. She was lost in her memory of the street where she once lived with her father, on the second floor of an apartment building on the same street as her favorite cafe, when she became suddenly aware of grass crunching behind her. She spun, on high alert, expecting red bands and black crosses on instinct. But no, it was _him_. The familiar face of Dick Grayson, the most envied (and bullied, for his “pretty boy” black curls and blue eyes and dimples and body like a Michelangelo statue and oh, she was getting preoccupied) soldier in camp.  


Dick Grayson. Oh boy. The kid had been visiting her for the past two months, since she was stationed with this troop. He was grinning that shit-eating grin she had become very used to—the kind of grin that just screamed how aware he was of his own prettiness. She crossed her arms as his blue-eyed gaze raked over her, hyper-aware of the fact that she was in nothing but a nightshirt, but not necessarily ashamed. Rocking back on his heels, he stopped several feet in front of her, and she almost wished he had taken the few extra steps and come close. Looking at the sliver of skin showing between the low waistband of his pants and his shirt felt like a sin, and she had the almost irresistible urge to explore that area very thoroughly—  


Oh. She was preoccupied again.  


“Well well, look who it is. Raggedy Anne,” he quipped, crossing his ankles and leaning forward a little to be eye-to-eye with her.  


Barbara rolled her eyes, trying not to smirk. “Really? Still stuck on that nickname?”  


“What, you don’t like it?”  


“Not exactly. Plus, you’ve been using it for the past week. Haven’t you come up with another redhead reference yet?”  


Dick’s grin widened almost wickedly as he stepped closer. He cupped a hand on the back of her head and pulled her forehead to his lips, taking a deep breath of the scent of her hair. The playful mood he had started took a turn as she let herself be held by him, leaning into the hard contours of his body. His lips brushed her skin, and she sighed a little, sliding her hands up his biceps.  


“Hey,” he muttered against her hairline.  


“Hey.” He smelled like earth and rain. She couldn’t bring herself to move away.  


“Tough day?”  


She made a sound in the back of her throat. “Every day’s tough.”  


He half smiled wryly at that, pulling his palms down her arms as he looked down at her. His mouth quirked when he said, “Maybe I can make it better?” The question was filled with all of the boyish implications of his wandering hands and raised eyebrows. She smiled a bit, amused by his forwardness, but took a step back.  


“Not tonight, Dick.”  


But he followed her step, bumping chests with her as his palm pressed against the small of her back. He ducked his head and her vision was clouded by dark curls. “Babs,” he breathed against her throat. Goosebumps rose on her skin again, but this time not because of the chill.  


Once again, she didn’t have the willpower to push him away. She lifted her face a bit, sighing and closing her eyes as she pressed on the back of his neck. He kissed under her ear as if offering worship to a goddess, then nudged his face back up and fitted his lips against hers.  


Kissing him always sent sparks of heat down her spine. She melted against him, tangling her hands in his hair as he tugged her close by her hips. His tongue traced her bottom lip, and she allowed him a sliver of entrance before pulling away, hands on his chest. Whining a little with loss, he kept his hands firmly on her waist, but she pushed against him again and he reluctantly detached.  


“We can’t do this, Dick, you know that,” Barbara whispered. His hungry gaze bloomed warmth in her cheeks. She looked away. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”  


He nodded a bit, finally ghosting a smile as he forced his stare to move back to her face. “On the field, at least. Right?”  


Barbara shook her head. “Let’s hope not. Only reason I’d see you out there is if you were hurt, so let’s bet against that one.”  


He grabbed her hand before she could slide past him. “Tomorrow night, then?”  


God bless him, he sounded so hopeful. And she was so weak. “Tomorrow night. If all goes well.” Pulling her hand from his grasp, she slipped away.

~~~

It was the same urgent dance every time guns were fired and blood was shed. Save this life, then the next one, then the next one, then the next one. Put that one on a stretcher, take this one in the ambulance, clean this wound, tourniquet those, plug these bullet holes, and send him back out. Over and over and over and over.  


Ironically, battles were always hard for Barbara to remember. And Barbara remembered _everything_. She always assumed it was the chaos that left her mind whirling, or the autopilot that kicked in when she was focused on saving his life, then the next one, then the next one, then the next one. She barely registered faces, only allowed herself to assess the damage and provide a solution. It was a simple enough routine with dire consequences if she made a mistake.  


She was up to her knees in mud and gore, fighting through the mire and blinking through the frozen rain pelting through her clothes. Ducking between bodies, she checked pulses as the ambulance roared circles around the area.  


Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. There’d been a particularly bad shootout here; the medics practically watched it happen in front of their eyes. She glanced over faces, briefly ignoring her unspoken rule as she checked for any familiar ones.  


Then she saw him. Dick.  


Her heart sank into her gut. Taking a breath, she knelt slowly, as if it was just another unfortunately-fated soldier.  


His face. There was blood and flesh spattered on it, probably not his own (hopefully not his own). She felt for a pulse and noticed her hands were colder than he was.  


Alive. She let out a breath in a rush, straightening up quickly and waving to the ambulance. It careened in a turn, heading toward her as she assessed the damage. Blood thrummed in her ears, drowning out the sound of her own breathing.  


_Where’s the blood coming from, that’s what you need to know,_ she reminded herself as her hands trembled, rubbing over his chest and abdomen. _Check for head wounds. Then chest, then stomach, then limbs. He could just be knocked out, or—_  


She finally noticed. His knee was bent backwards, in a way it wasn’t supposed to go at all. Blood stained the ground under it.  


The ambulance had stopped to take a man from another nurse. She occupied herself by feeling the break, making sure she couldn’t set it herself, assuring herself that he was probably okay. Okay. He was okay.  


She hefted him into her arms, pulling him up and preparing him for the ambulance.  


_CRACK._  


Her hearing shot out before she felt the pain. She experienced it almost out-of-body, watching her back and neck arch and blood spray out in front of her. It covered Dick. It was the first thing she was aware of afterwards, looking down at him. She was covering him.  


Then she felt her spine wobble, like it was made of foam. Flopping forward, her head thunked against Dick’s chest. She stayed conscious long enough to think, briefly, about her father, fighting a hundred miles away, and the home she would never see again.  


Then, she closed her eyes, listening to Dick’s heartbeat.


	2. Chapter 2 (Jason, Roy, Bruce, minor DickBabs)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ft. Jason/Roy, Bruce, and minor Dick/Babs towards the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol this was ROUGHHHH idk why anyway enjoy im not sorry for anything :))))))))

_I’m a fuckin’ soldier._

At least, that’s what Jason Todd kept telling himself, wincing as his flat ass hit the hard bench of the transport truck. He and about a hundred other boys were loaded up, all bouncing painfully along the rocky terrain. They were currently being carried to an active battlefield where another team of their troops were being overwhelmed by Germans. The radios had been blaring all night as the other team begged for backup; Jason didn’t sleep listening to them, weirdly annoyed by the constant tinny of voices over the static. Hell, he just wanted to sleep. He hadn’t slept in days. Pardon him if he was a monster for not caring.

Then again, the other half of him—the good half, he supposed, or at least the logical one—knew that this war was beating him down to nothing. He’d become numb to death and dying. Even when his bunkmate, a huge guy he and the other guys called Bizarro, was killed by a stray shell, Jason barely batted an eyelash when they sent his body off covered in a sheet.

 _I’m a fuckin’ soldier._ Was that the reason why? Was he finally “conforming to the masses?” Was he finally fitting that dead-eyed, empty-souled stereotype he saw moping around bases, the one that nurses and commanders and everyone else warned him he would become?

…Why didn’t that idea bother him as much as it used to?

Jason glanced sideways at his…well, he guessed he was his best friend, at the moment. Mr. Roy Harper, equipped with the best aim on this end of Europe—or so he claimed. His head hung, face downwards, so Jason couldn’t check to see if his eyes looked as empty as his suddenly felt. He used the next road bump as an excuse to elbow him, but Roy lifted his head and blinked at Jason like he had said his name, humming a question mark.

His eyes were…well, eyes. Jason kinda forgot Roy complained about how dead inside he was, even before the war.

“Nothing,” Jason mumbled, looking away.

“Aw come on.” Roy elbowed him a bit. “Don’t tell me you’re nervous.” His deep voice held a rough twang that made Jason mentally locate him in Texas.

“Nervous?” Psh. Jason wished he was nervous. At least then he’d feel something. “No way. This is like sweeping up spilled bread crumbs on aisle nine by now. Mind-numbing.”

Roy sighed a bit, ruffling a hand through his cropped red hair. “Well, yeah. Maybe not that particular scenario, but the word sure applies. Mind-numbing.”

They drifted into silence again. After an hour or so, a few guys started to complain about having to piss. The driver purposefully tortured them for another thirty minutes, then pulled off the path to let them off. Jason followed Roy to the edge of the woods, a bit aways from the other guys. Unzipping his pants, he widened his stance and sighed as the pressure below his gut began to ease.

He heard Roy grunt a few feet from him and looked. He had his head tilted back, groaning. “God, I wish I could jerk off.”

Jason laughed shortly, averting his gaze quickly back between his own legs. “Of all times to even _think_ about that…”

“Honestly, is there a better time?” Roy glanced towards the other guys from the truck, who were sharing a drink of water about thirty feet away, as if checking to see if they were looking.

“Roy, please no.”

“I’m not gonna do it,” he scoffed, shaking off a bit before shoving everything back into his pants.

Jason rolled his eyes a bit before tucking himself in and zipping up as well. He took a moment to stretch his arms above his head, closing his eyes, before he felt a hand slide across his lower stomach. His eyes shot open to find Roy’s face filling his vision. Then, he was being kissed.

It was short, unlike the other two times.

Just as good.

Jason closed his eyes for the last half, but kept his hands at his sides.

When Roy pulled back, his lips brushed Jason’s cheek as he muttered, “That’s for if I die out there.”

Jason struggled to keep a stony face, a new pressure behind his gut. God, war made him horny. “What if I die?”

Roy smirked, all freckles and sunburns. “You’re just gonna have to figure that out yourself, soldier.”

Jason was tempted for a brief moment to grab his crotch in some sort of sick revenge. He glanced down, considering, but decided against it, instead planting a hand on Roy’s chest and pushing him away. He wasn’t about to be murdered by his own teammates for getting with another guy, anyway. Even though by now he didn’t see how there was any man in this war who hadn’t thought about doing it with another man at least once.

“Back off, Harper,” he smirked.

“What? Not the best time for romance?” Roy challenged, a finger hooking in the front of Jason’s pants. Jason grabbed his wrist in warning and Roy backed off with a laugh. “Guess not."

“We’re not doing this, I thought we already decided that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Gotta keep face and all that.” He steeled his expression, a look that briefly reminded Jason of his stick-up-the-ass dad.

“Yeah. That and you smell like a dumpster fire.”

Roy shoved him and Jason laughed as they walked back to the truck.

They sat in silence the rest of the way. Jason might have dozed off, he thought years later, looking back, because he didn’t ever remember the truck stopping, or getting out of it. He only remembered the blast blowing out the bottom of the truck, remembers flying through the air, remembers Roy’s face screaming through clouds of soot, remembers hurt, hurt, hurt.

Then, nothing.

~~~~~

Rage. That was the only word Bruce Wayne could think to describe the pounding in his ears, the heat in his throat, the trembling in his hands. His vision pulsed red, blinding out the note listing to names of the soldiers who drove into a minefield last night. Someone was still talking to him, a tinny drone in the background of the roaring of his own bloodstream.

“Your son was amongst the dead. His body wasn’t found. There weren’t any survivors, you know.”

Something snapped in Bruce. It hardly surprised him; it had happened several times before in his life, though sparsely, like the night his parents were murdered, or the day his first love, Rachel, died, or the night he watched Dick’s parents fall to their deaths from the trapeze. It was the same feeling. The same dangerous energy.

He crumpled the note as he turned, shoving the owner of the background voice away. He heard him exclaim something, but didn’t pay attention, instead pushing the note into his pocket.

It took the shout of his commanding officer, Lieutenant James Gordon, for him to look up and fully realize his hand clutched the door to a van loaded with weapons and ammunition. Gordon’s face twisted in anger, mustache curled above his snarl.

“What is the meaning of this, Wayne?!” His feet thudded toward Bruce.

Bruce’s nostrils flared as he stared at his own hand gripping the door handle to the car. His knuckles were white. He couldn’t find any words to say that made sense, so he kept quiet, eyes locked ahead.

The footsteps stopped behind him, about ten feet if he had to guess. Gordon waited a moment before reiterating loudly and just as harshly, “Well?!”

“I need to do something,” Bruce spit out between clenched teeth.

“And what’s that, Bruce? Drive off with our reserve ammunition? What in the hell do you think I would let you do that for?”

Bruce’s jaw ached from clenching so hard.

“If you don’t step away from that car in ten seconds, I will file a report against you. You may be a good soldier, but I know how you get, son. We both know how you get. Now step away.”

Bruce turned slowly. It felt like trying to move through wet sand. Swallowing hard, he finally managed to rasp out, “They killed my son.” Then, a beat. Again. “They killed my son.”

Gordon stared for a long moment. He had always had the ability to wear a mask of indifference to make his mind impenetrable, as it was now. There was no hint of what was happening behind his eyes until he sighed and lowered his head a bit, rubbing a hand through the hairs at the nape of his neck. When Gordon spoke again, stepping closer, he sounded his age for once. “Look, kid. I know. I just got news, too.”

Briefly, an image of red hair, sunny freckles, and an easy smile flashed through Bruce’s mind, all memorized from the images Gordon kept up in his tent. _His daughter_.

For a moment, Gordon seemed to find it hard to speak again. “Uh…yeah.” Another beat, and he managed to harden his voice somewhat again, furrowing his thick, white eyebrows and clenching his fists. “But that doesn’t give you any right to act out. Alright? If the entire Allied army can’t get through the Nazis, then what on God’s earth makes you think you can?”

Bruce’s breathing was stuttering through his nostrils, halted by a growing pressure in his chest. With finality, he pulled the car door open and climbed in.

Gordon screamed dimly at him as he locked the doors, then bent to hijack the wiring. The car sputtered to life, and Bruce hit the gas pedal to the floorboards and careened out of camp, sending mud and dirt flying into the growing crowd of wide eyed soldiers behind him.

~~~~~

_Soft lips pressed against his, melding perfectly with the shape of his mouth. Instinctively, Dick pulled whoever it was closer, tilting his head to the side and deepening their embrace. It took a moment before he opened his eyes and saw her: red hair like a sunset on the beach, freckles scattered like stars on her face, voice like honey in chai tea._

_“You just gonna stand there, wonder boy?”_

_Dick’s cheeks hurt, bunched up so his eyes squinted and his dimples showed. His hands slid into the dip of her waist like they were meant to be there. Everything else was a blur; he couldn’t move his eyes from her, but he didn’t want to. She was grinning, a smile he’d never seen her wear before, so bright it made his chest ache. Her cheeks were rosy, red hair swirling loose around her face as she laughed, and he wanted to cry._

_He could feel her. He swore he could. One of her hands rested on the side of his neck, the other clasped in his as they spun. Their feet barely touched the ground._

_“You taking me dancing, hm, Dickie-bird?” Her breath tickled his ear as her touch left prickling trails across his neck and shoulders. His breath caught in his throat._

_“Yeah,” he croaked. “I’m taking you dancing, Babs.”_

_They turned in aimless, slow circles, wrapped up in each other. She smelled like antiseptic and rubber._

“I’m taking you dancing, Babs,” Dick muttered under his breath, head lolling onto his pillow dreamily as nurses stumbled between groaning soldiers lying in the beds of the crowded hospital around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hated almost everything about that but bitch. WE GON KEEP GOIN ANYWAY BIIIIIIITCH
> 
> no i do not take constructive criticism (no jk pls comment anything u want lol)


End file.
